Doug McWhorter (left) with TOPS Founder Paul Steingard, D.O., FACOFP

TOPS physicals have revealed numerous potential health problems for students.  A TOPS screening in 2004 helped to save the life of Doug McWhorter, a high school junior whose coach mandated that he get his annual physical at the TOPS event.  Doug remembers that he didn’t think a free screening could be very good and he wasn’t happy about having to attend. Then his testing came back abnormal and his world changed.

William J. Rappoport, M.D., FACC, Arizona Heart Institute, was the volunteer cardiologist who evaluated Doug that day.  “His ECG was grossly abnormal.  We did an ECHO right there and found that he had Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM).  There were no murmurs and no positive features in his family history, so a normal physical would have missed it.  Because it’s a genetic disorder, his entire family was screened.  It was a good thing because both his father and brother were also diagnosed with HCM.”  Now a 19-year-old college student, Doug and his affected family members received treatment for their condition.  Doug says the TOPS physical was the best he ever had.  “As it turns out, the free physical I was so skeptical of ended up being the one I value most.”

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